All the News We Can Find on Marriage Equality & LGBT Rights

USA, Wyoming: Professor Calls for Marriage Equality

Written by scott on July 14th, 2013

Professor Robin Waldo Groose from the University of Wyoming has penned an op-ed pushing for marriage equality in The Equality State. From Trib.com:

I joined the University of Wyoming faculty a quarter-century ago. Then, on campus, I sometimes observed couples holding hands, in tender embrace, and kissing. And so it is today. But this has changed: Now, some of those loving couples are same-sex, publicly expressing affection. (But, young people, no matter what your sexual orientation, please do not make too much of a spectacle of yourselves, especially in my classes.)

Why is sexual orientation such a big deal in Wyoming? In terms of population, we are America’s most insignificant state. At the same time, we present a high LGBT profile. Tragically, Wyoming’s LGBT notoriety began here in Laramie in 1998 with the brutal murder of a Casper native, UW student Matthew Shepard. Since then, Mary Cheney became one of America’s most famous married lesbian mothers. And even if the box office smash was filmed in the Canadian Rockies, Annie Proulx’s story of the Brokeback Mountain boys is a Wyoming story. For some, the “Cowboy State” became the “Gay Cowboy State.”

But let us try to be honest and accurate. If cowboys and cowgirls are like Americans in other walks of life, the Cowboy State is probably 95 percent straight and 5 percent gay. Most important, together we are one, enriching one another’s lives. 100 percent Wyoming.

Is marriage equality a possibility this decade in Wyoming? Anyone have any polling out of the state on this issue?